This past week, I was invited to take part in an event called Free the Brews hosted by Generation Opportunity.
Generation Opportunity is a nationwide non-profit funded by the Koch Brothers. They claim to be non-partisan, but they share funding mechanisms with a number of conservative groups and their messages are certainly libertarian/tea party heavy. As it appears to me, they are a group aimed at getting Millennials to vote conservative in the name of pro-business, or anti-fun, or something. Millennials are already known to skew more liberal than previous generations, so I guess this is a run at convincing a certain amount of them that they’re conservative, really. GenOpp is co-opting the craft beer industry largely under the banner of “down with the three-tier system”, or to put it succinctly, “Free the Brews.”

If you know me, you know I am not what you would call “conservative” unless we’re talking conservation of mass.

So, then, you might ask, what the hell was I doing at this event?

Well, a little history:

Back in May, Generation Opportunity wrote an op-ed in the Charlotte Observer titled “Free North Carolina’s brews from archaic regulations”, written by the head of the group in North Carolina, Alex Johnson. It highlights some issues that are, indeed, issues in North Carolina, but also puts focus on things that really have no bearing, and some that are plain wrong. The primary message is “regulation is bad.”

The real truth, of course, is that what makes North Carolina a great beer state is the beer and that without the beer from the breweries we’d all be getting shitfaced on Muscadine wine right now.

Anyway, as President of the North Carolina Craft Brewers Guild, I wrote an op-ed response… which never got published. Here’s a PDF if you’re curious what I had to say; it’s not really the point today.

When GenOpp announced the Free the Brews events, they invited the Guild to take part and the Guild was – understandably, I think – nervous. While GenOpp is championing some of the causes that the Guild believes in, they have reckless rhetoric. It’s the kind of rhetoric that creates political opponents. The Executive Director and I talked about it, and we felt that we didn’t want a narrative about beer to exist in North Carolina without our direct participation. We also knew that this event was happening whether we were there or not. So we agreed to take part. It was a calculated risk.

In the week leading up to the event, I was contacted by a lot of friends asking me something along the lines of “What the hell are you doing?” I had a lot of press contact me and ask me if I was a member of GenOpp (I’m not), or how did the Guild come to co-sponsor this event (we didn’t).

The most burdensome law is the three-tier system which requires that brewers, distributors, and retailers exist as separate entities. Brewers who produce over a certain number of barrels of beer cannot sell their products directly to consumers. Instead, they must sell to a distributor who then sells to the retailer. Not only does this steer profit toward the middle-man, it also makes expansion and experimentation difficult.

The culture of craft beer in Michigan and across the country is one of camaraderie, and brewers are always trying to push the envelope with new and exciting brews. Unfortunately, regulations make it hard for brewers to drive change. When Reith decided it was time to open Atwater and bring his passion for beer to the young people of Detroit – all of whom are over 21, of course – he faced a few setbacks.

“I had to go through every level of government just to get a permit,” he lamented at the event. Just waiting for the permit to go through federal, state, and local officials took almost twelve months. If regulations were streamlined to make the permit process simpler and speedier, more craft breweries would be able to open, spurring an increase in local competition and more creative products for consumers to choose from.

Less government means more opportunity, more craft beer, and more freedom.

Gardner took a remark about permits out of context and craftily implied that it was an attack on Michigan’s entire alcohol system. In fact, during the event Gardner attended, Atwater never addressed Michigan’s alcohol regulations. Just cumbersome permits.

What must be stated unequivocally: Michigan’s system works for the small brewery, not against it.

So, I was nervous going into the event on Thursday. I did my best to tell this story: We have it good in North Carolina. Our laws are pretty damn friendly. There’s a reason that breweries are moving here from across the country and opening up at the fastest rate in the country. It’s not because we’re all suffering here. Are there laws that need to be updated? Sure. The bulk of the law was written in 1938 and updated in 1983. The craft industry barely existed the last time the laws were revised. We’re in a different place now, and the laws will change to reflect that, but de-regulation is not the answer.

We’ll see if I am misquoted in my very own op-ed this week. If so, my distributor and I will probably have a blast crafting a rebuttal. The literature (seen to the right here) is definitely along the same lines as the Michigan event.

The handouts at Free the Brews

But that’s also not the point (he said, 1000 words in):

The point is this: Craft beer is currently in this really strange space in politics in which we are neither the darlings of the right or the darlings of the left. We enjoy support from both sides of the aisle, and it enables us to make a lot of progress when it comes to updating old laws to fit a new industry. The last thing we need is to be co-opted by A Cause. As soon as we are seen as a Republican issue or a Democratic issue things are going to get really sticky.

Look, changing laws takes a long damn time. It’s a complicated system, and not just because of the network of relationships and partisanship, or that some laws are only considered during certain sessions in non-election years, but also because changing a law in one place has far-reaching effects. Simple word changes in a law can have effects that go far beyond the intent of the author. Tax changes can change the entire course of state budgets. It’s natural that the pace of industry will outstrip that of policy. That’s okay. Policy changes to fit us, eventually, so long as we work reasonably and responsibly toward an established goal.

I’m happy that there are other groups out there talking policy. I’m glad that there’s apparently a nationwide discussion about alcoholic beverages that isn’t about restricting them further. On the other hand, I’m terrified that it’s happening outside of the brewing industry. Even brewers don’t necessarily agree about what is best for breweries. The possibility of solutions being proposed by people who don’t even understand the problems – just because they want to further a broad political agenda of “more young voters” – could hamper our industry in a real way. Grassroots support is great. Grassroots policy is tricky.

So, my message for Millennials and GenOpp and everyone is this. If you really want to help craft beer and breweries? Go to your local brewery and buy a pint. I promise that they will pursue their own interests just fine. In fact, one of the reasons that there’s a North Carolina Craft Brewers Guild is precisely that: to help brewers pursue their own interests. The Guild has a robust legislative agenda. We’re working toward getting a lot of laws updated. It’s the ones that brewers are concerned about, and I promise all of them are working toward getting beer into your hands because that’s how we continue to pay our mortgages. We know the people involved, we know how these laws will effect brewers. We’re doing a lot less guess work than an outside group would.

The list in the SPI doesn’t bother me much. I don’t see anything in it that’s necessarily out of place, and besides which lists are lazy journalism. Lists are what happens when somebody has to get an article out but doesn’t want to take the time to actually write an article. It’s why BuzzFeed exists. It’s not based off of research or any sort of really quantifiable criteria, it’s based off of personal experience, and it’s largely opinion regardless of the fact that this dude thinks he’s got some sort of repeatable experiment. It’s fine. You could also title this article, “10 Emerging Beer Cultures That I Have Recently Visited and/or Read About”. “Top Ten” is click bait. You’ll also note that it leaves off Washington DC and Richmond, VA, both of which have fantastic emerging beer cultures.

No, what bothers me is the thesis of the TBJ article which is bold and clear in the last paragraph:

Perhaps Raleigh isn’t making recent beer lists – not because there isn’t a plethora of breweries to choose from – because these breweries aren’t doing anything to stand out.

Let me posit another hypothesis: Maybe Raleigh isn’t making recent beer lists because of lack of media support in our local markets. I mean, how else is some guy from Seattle supposed to know that we have a great beer culture? Right now, he reads your article and his response is, “Nailed it.” Nothing to see here, move along.

Now, look, I realize that negative and controversial headlines move papers, but what happened here is that an article got published in a market across country. That didn’t mention North Carolina at all and the TBJ wrote a followup that specifically calls out our local market in a negative way. Thanks for the support guys! Can’t wait to invite you to our next party!

Raleigh – no, I’m going to talk about the entire Triangle, because it takes up the same geographical space as some of the other emerging beer towns in the U.S., and actually includes all 32 of the breweries that are referenced in the TBJ – is one of the fastest growing beer areas in the country. Alongside those 32 breweries we also have another 10 breweries in planning (30% increase!) that I know about and probably more that I don’t know about.

So, you know, whatever. Nothing special. Except for the worldwide recognition of excellent beer across a vast range of styles. Yawn.

Fact is this: The Triangle is a great place to have a beer. Is there a lot of “boring” beer out there? Sure. There’s a lot of Pale Ale, IPA, Hefeweissen, Porter, Stout, Kolsch, and whatnot out there, and the slice of the market that is Double Sour Imperial Cucumber and Chive Stouts is fairly small. You know why? Because that’s true everywhere. This country’s beer culture is built on those every day beers. The reason they’re everywhere is not that they’re boring, it’s that they’re good. You think they’re the same everywhere you go? Line up 30 IPAs from Raleigh/Durham’s breweries and get ready for a rollercoaster. They’re all vastly different and all amazing in their own way. We wouldn’t have a beer culture in this country if it weren’t for those every day beers being the inspiration for beers that would become every day beers: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Sam Adams Boston Lager, Anchor Steam, etc.

I can make a long list of classic American beers that sound like they don’t “stand out” but that the backbone of this country’s beer industry are built on.

But here’s the other thing about this article. The original criteria of the listicle as reported by the TBJ is this (emphasis mine):

To get on this list, “you need one or more great, veteran brewers in that culture; people others can learn from and emulate. And, most of all, you need a population that’s avid, open-minded, culturally aware, adaptable, adventurous and ready to embrace the Journey along with that new brewery,” the blogger writes.

So, I ultimately read this TBJ article as a slight against our beer drinking population. Raleigh/Durham drinkers, are you really going to take this? I read here that you’re not open-minded, culturally aware, adaptable, adventurous, or ready to embrace a new brewery. To me, the way the TBJ article reads, regardless of the quality of the beer – which is clearly there – we’re not an emerging beer culture because of the quality of the drinker. The crowd at my pub suggests that this isn’t true, but I’m not out drinking with you.

Here’s my call to action: Prove that shit wrong. I know you’re better than that. I see people coming out to our “Sour Sundays”, I see complex and interesting beer styles being gobbled up, I see local support for local breweries every day. And while maybe the author of this article didn’t do the best job doing local research before publishing a nastygram, maybe she shouldn’t have had to do research to know how much local drinkers dig the local beer scene.

So, go forth, drink local, support local, and let’s make sure that articles like this never darken our local media again.

Dear Ms. Kurry, I would like to personally invite you on a tour of the Triangle’s breweries to show you that they are anything but unspectacular. We’ll start here at Mystery and I will personally drive you around all day to make sure we hit as many phenomenal spots as possible. I’m afraid that all 32 breweries may not be possible in one day, since that amounts to 4 per hour in an 8-hour period (to say nothing of drunkenness), but I’ll get you to at least 10 that will blow your socks off. Drop me an e-mail, we’ll make it happen.

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I’ve been kind of struggling over whether or not to write this. Partly because it comes off as something of a “woe is me” kind of post and partly because it looks like an excuse, but in reality it’s just me being frustrated and venting. So, hi, I have a blog.

Well, it IS something of a “woe is me” post, I guess. But, here goes.

Here at Mystery, we use a lot of specialty malts. You could probably argue that the only thing that we use is specialty malt because we don’t use any base 2-row malts. All of our base grain is either Pilsner Malt or Maris Otter depending on the style. For a handful of our brands throughout the year, we use very specific malts because of a very specific flavor we get from it.
Let me explain that last sentence. One some very base level, malt is malt. The Cara malt from Crisp will get me the same basic flavor as the Cara malt from Simpsons, which will get me the same basic flavor as the Cara malt from Patagonia or a blend of Crystal 10 and Crystal 20 from Briess.

It’s not entirely true. They all have their own character, but when blended into an overall beer the only people who are really noticing those things are the people inside the brewery that have been around since last year’s run of the same beers and have tasted them a LOT. That’s just 3 of us, really.

We have some ingredients, however, that have very specific characters that we feel aren’t reproducible in other malts. The one that specifically jumps to mind for me – primarily because I’ve been having a problem with it – is Simpsons Golden Naked Oats. It is, without a doubt, one of the primary driving flavors in Six Impossible Things, our Chocolate Breakfast Stout (and pretty much our most popular beer). I haven’t been able to find anything that tastes the same. We have a handful of grains like that. They’re normally from small foreign producers. You’re probably already guessing what I’m going to write about.

This winter in particular, our supply chain has been a complete disaster. We’ve had orders come in wrong, we’ve had orders get lost, we’ve had deliveries show up a week late. It’s been one thing after another. In the case of our oats, we bought the last few bags in the entire Southeast in mid-January after being out for the better part of a month. I had to buy two more bags from a homebrew shop to do another batch of beer. As near as I can tell there are no Golden Naked Oats in the US. Anywhere.

The container that the oats are supposed to be in left England (which, of course, has been experiencing catastrophic flooding) late. It got caught in a storm on the Atlantic Ocean. Twice. It was finally supposed to arrive this week just in time for the winter storm that hit this weekend. Once it finally gets unloaded and goes through customs it has to take a truck to Minnesota where it’ll get portioned out to more trucks who will then get it to warehouses around the country around a week after that at which point I will finally be able to order it ASSUMING that order is handled correctly.

So what’s the result? The result is that I stop producing my most popular seasonal beer because I, quite literally, cannot do it. It’ll be weeks or longer before I get it back out in the market, at which point it’ll be mid-spring and totally out of season. It’s frustrating.

So, why the bitch session? Because nobody can see it. To my distributor, to bars and restaurants, to customers in my pub, I’m just not making enough beer, and I’m not making enough of something that will make all of them happy, too. It’s an excuse. What do you mean you can’t get oats? I can go get Quaker Oats at the grocery store and bring you some.

No, you can’t.

And I feel very responsible for the fact that every piece of the chain below me is disappointed, and I feel, too, that I have no recourse in the supply chain above me. Not just for this instance, but for anything.

What am I going to do? Not order again from my largest supplier? Hold them financially responsible for the fact that I’m losing business because they can’t get an order right? What leverage does a small brewery really have? We can’t order in all of the grain for the year up front. We don’t have that kind of cash, much less that kind of storage space. I would imagine that most small breweries are in the same boat that I am.

In a lot of ways, this seems like it would be so much worse if I had a flagship. At least now I can call it quits on a brand and move on to the next season, better luck next year. What happens if you have one of these things happen to your flagship? You change the recipe? Change the flavor? Screw consistency?

So, the next time you see a brewery with what looks like supply problems, maybe think a little bit about how supply chain makes a difference.

Weird article, right? I know. I just got back to my hotel room. I’m in between sessions on the Saturday of GABF 2013. I’ve had about 3 hours of sleep and my mouth still kinda tastes like whiskey (and a little like shitty cigar), so I’m definitely not at my finest. With all of that, you could probably construe this article as me being a sore loser. In reality, writing is my way of dealing with things; this is a lot closer to therapy for me and you just get to read it.
Lucky you.

I’m disappointed. I can’t imagine any brewer who doesn’t get a medal not being disappointed. After all, we don’t get into this business to make mediocre shitty beer, and if I didn’t think my beer was fantastic I probably shouldn’t have started in the first place. You spend a LOT of money and a lot of time getting out to this thing, and it’s an exhausting, insane, shitshow of a week. You kind of want to get something out of it.

I came to the GABF this year knowing that I was at pretty long odds to pick up a medal today. Here’s why:

We’re pretty new. We’re still getting a lot of our processes down. And while I’m pretty confident in our ability to make great beer, I’m not 100% on our process for shipping a handful of bottles across the country for a competition. Let’s face it – we’re just getting into bottling now. We bottled these beers on a 90 degree day, put them in a cardboard box and shipped them overnight to Colorado. That beer sat in the back of a hot van, shook its way onto an airplane somewhere, it flew in a cargo container across the country before getting into another truck, hopefully making it there without breaking, and then finally, sitting in a warehouse for a month or more under unknown conditions.And, yeah, look, I know. A LOT of other breweries have the same thing going on, and I’ll get back to that later. I’m saying – I don’t know how my beer was when it got to judging because I don’t know how good our process is for doing this. We made it up.

We’re seasonal only. The beer we sent into the competition was the beer that I was pretty sure we’d have around when we had to send samples into the competition. It’s not like I had flagships to send.Funny story: Out of all of the beers we’re pouring at the festival, only 2 are currently available on the market in NC and those two are just a little left over from our summer brands and will soon be gone. We’ve moved on. It’ll all be back next year, but by in large we came to CO to pour beers that we no longer have in stock.

We’re not style brewers. Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass if my stout meets the perfect metrics of a Foreign Extra Stout. I made it that way because it tastes good. But in what category do you put a Foreign Extra Stout made with Lemons and Lemongrass? Herb and spice? Experimental? We put it into fruit beer because why the hell not? What about our wheatless Berliner Weisse, or our English-Style Black IPA? We’re just not built for competition. I never have been as a brewer, the GABF will be no different.

I’m still pretty disappointed.

It’s nice to have people come up to the booth and tell us that the beer is great. It would be awesome to have a piece of hardware. Shit happens, eh?

Here are a couple of observations that I’ve been going over in my head:

The majority of the winners were states that were really close to the GABF. Makes you wonder a little bit about how much travel effects the beers that are getting judged. I mean, look, you’ve got two CO brewers and a CA brewer that just opened up shop in NC so that they could avoid shipping beer across the country because of the toll travel takes on the product. Funny that we should be sending beer back the other direction and expecting it to be great, isn’t it?But hey – I don’t want to take anything away from the winners – I tried quite a few of the winning beers and they were fantastic. On the other hand, I also had some fantastic stuff from breweries outside of the western 3rd of the U.S., too. It would be really interesting to see the GABF on the East Coast sometime to see how beers from CO and CA made the trip, or to see if there’s a different judging pool in a different geographic location.

There are 140-something categories in the BA Style Guidelines, but there are 84 medal categories. That means that a lot of those sub categories are getting mixed together, which means that if you have something fairly rare or special that you’re putting into one of the sub categories, at some point you’re getting lumped in with beers that are potentially very different than what you entered.I know how judging normally works, and I know that GABF is fairly unique, but if I got this right it should go something like this: Everything gets tasted and scored. Beers that score over X are all put in a medal round. Scores from X – Y are bronze, scores from Y – Z are silver, scores over Z are gold (which is why there are sometimes categories without a particular medal awarded). Beers are are in those ranges get tasted again in a “best in category” ranking and whichever one wins in that mini competition gets the medal. (Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, this is how I understand it.)

Now, let’s pretend your brewery made a Gratzer, which is a low alcohol, delicate, light, smoky Polish style beer. It’s got it’s own category (27E!) and style definition. In judging, however, it falls under “Smoke Beers” which is a huge category with a lot of BIG beers in it. Even if your brewery made a really fantastic gratzer and it was considered for a medal, if it went up against – I don’t know – a Smoked Russian Imperial Stout, then your delicate little gratzer gets really enormously overwhelmed in a tasting. And I think this is true regardless of how good the judges are. Judging is pretty subjective and pretty tiring to the palate, especially when you’re tasting really big aggressive beers like.. well… smoke beers. I’ve judged a lot of competitions and I know, too, that when it comes down to final rounds it can often be a matter of a subjective whim of a judge.

I’m not saying this happened. But I do feel like a lot of my beers are pretty delicate, and it’s what makes them good. They’re never going to stand up against giant smack-you-in-the-face flavors, and that’s why we’ll never do well in competition, but I think that blending categories together (out of necessity, I know) exacerbates that problem.

The solution is for me to lower my expectations.

And that’s it – for now. Until someone is douchey to me in the comments and tells me that my beer sucks (you’re wrong).

I’ve been a Red Sox fan for a long time, and so like I’ve been so used to saying in the past: Better luck next year. We’ll get ’em.

Congratulations to all of the breweries at the GABF – not just the ones who won. There has been some really outstanding, amazing beer. Kudos and thanks for keeping beer great.

Yesterday, we announced over at Mystery Brewing Company that, as of September 1st, we’d no longer be offering refunds on growlers. Since this decision looks like it’s coming a little out of left field, and because I’ve always wanted this blog to be a little behind-the-scenes-ish for the brewing industry, I thought I’d take the time to lay out my reasoning behind why we’re doiing this.

Reason #1: Cleaning Growlers Sucks

It’s incredibly time-consuming and incredibly wasteful. To be fair, we don’t have a top-of-the-line growler cleaning machine, but that’s primarily because – as near as I can tell – one doesn’t exist. Here’s how we clean growlers right now:

Remove the growler from the box that it was returned in.

Remove and discard the cap, remove any stickers, price tags, or anything else that has been affixed to the growler.

If there are stubborn stains, put the growlers to soak in a hot caustic solution to remove those stubborn stains, flies, etc.

If there are cracks, chips, etc., immediately discard the growler.

After the caustic rinse and/or soak has been completed, each growler is rinsed with sanitizing solution to both neutralize the caustic and get it ready for fills. If you’re not filling as you’re cleaning, each growler is then re-boxed upside down to allow liquid to drain.

THEN when we fill them we re-inspect them (to make sure nothing’s happened inside, or someone hasn’t missed something earlier in the process).

Cleaning growlers is incredibly time consuming. Through 2013, cleaning growlers has been almost a full-time job at Mystery. It’s our estimate that we spend up to 30 hours of employee time every week cleaning growlers on an average week. If you count the amount of money that goes toward cleaning chemicals, water, caps, tape, and growlers that we just plain have to throw away because people are disgusting, on top of employee time, then every time we get a growler back from the marketplace that we need to clean, our profit on that original fill has been completely wiped out. If we were to get that same growler back again (which we have no good way of tracking), we would lose money. Losing money is not a good way to run a business. So the decision is partly an economic one.

Could we cut corners? Sure. But then our growlers would be gross. That’s also not a good way to run a business. Particularly one that relies on repeat purchases.

Reason #2: Growler Returns are a Logistical Nightmare

Getting growlers back from stores isn’t efficient or easy, either. Rather than just making a delivery to a store, you are now requiring a driver to go through the exercise of collecting and transporting empty bottles. Among the issues here:

Store employees often don’t sort growlers by brand, requiring a driver to go through box after box of empty growlers in order to make sure that they’re not paying a refund out for a growler that they’re not supposed to be picking up.

Since growlers often come back from consumers dirty, they often attract pests (normally thousands of fruit flies). Because of this, many stores keep growlers in locations away from everything else – at the bottom of a flight of stairs in the basement, locked in a storage shed outside the store, or even in multiple locations around the store.

Empty growlers rattle around in a truck much easier than full growlers. They’re much more likely to break when they’re empty because they don’t have mass keeping them in place.

The cardboard boxes that we use deteriorate as they go from warm to cold environments or dry to wet environments or any combination thereof. They break, they rip, the tape falls off, they have three or four different brands on them. Sometimes stores throw them out altogether and there is no good way to pick up empty growlers except for “loose.”

The crux of the issue here is that having a driver pick up empties adds a significant amount of time onto their route, and often adds an extra level of training and complexity, so it’s also inefficient and costly to the distributor.

Reason #3: Retail Growler Fills are now legal in NC

This summer, the North Carolina Legislature passed a law allowing retail growler fills in North Carolina (Session Law 2013-76). While the rules for this are not yet in place and it is not currently legal for retail establishments to fill growlers, it will be very soon. We anticipate that this will greatly reduce the amount of growler sales we make across the board.

Simply put: If a store can buy a keg from me and fill growlers with it, thereby making a much larger profit, why would they buy pre-filled growlers from me? Sure, some will, but many will not. Among the largest proponents of the retail growler law are Total Wine and Whole Foods, both of which have growler filling stations in other states, both of which are enormous potential customers for us when it comes to retail packaging. We’d rather sell them bottles than not sell them growlers. Or, better yet, sell them bottles and kegs so they can fill growlers themselves.

Reason #4: We’re Moving Into 22 oz. Bottles

And there it is: We’re moving into the bottle market. We’re interested in going into smaller packages that have a lower cost for us (growlers are crazy expensive), more portability, and lower cost in the marketplace. We’ve been told that in all cases in the local market, when a brewery has gone from offering growlers-only to growlers and bottles that their growler sales have dropped precipitously.

Reason #5: We Just Don’t Want To

We, the staff at the brewery, find growlers to be incredibly cumbersome and unpleasant.

Cleaning growlers is one of the grossest jobs we have. It’s full of old stale and rotten beer smells, mold, flies, and broken glass. We spend a lot of time with vinegary beer splashing on our clothes and ourselves, we spend hours wearing layers of protective gear as we clean them to keep chemicals off of us, or keep broken glass off of us. We spend hours scraping price tags and old stickers off of them. It’s just not nice. If we can make a more pleasant working environment while getting beer out to people in a better and more efficient way, we absolutely will.

In Summary

Growlers have been an important part of Mystery’s growth. In our first year, growlers made up a significant amount of our income. They have been an important part of getting our brand into the state and into the consciousness of state’s beer geek population, but we feel that with the combination of process problems inherent in growlers alongside the future of the marketplace (as we see it), that our time with them as a packaging option in bottle shops and grocery stores is coming to a close.

We’re excited to get smaller and better packaging out and we think everyone else will be excited to see it, too.